A cigar is sometimes just a cigar, or so Freud is supposed to have said. Unfortunately, a Havana is no longer just a Havana

AT AROUND 11 o'clock at night on the last Friday in February, Fidel Castro strode into a room in Havana full of smoke generated by 850 visiting cigar merchants—guests at a meeting organised by Habanos SA, the agency that markets Cuban cigars. Mr Castro thanked the five conferees who had won cigar-packed humidors in the evening's auction (total proceeds of $750,000 to the Cuban Health Authority) and warned his listeners of the dangers of smoking (he quit ten years ago). Next, he praised Cuba's 30,000 tobacco farmers, who produce what is acknowledged to be the world's finest cigar leaf, and, just before winding up at two in the morning, thanked his audience for the foreign currency their cigar sales bring his country.

The world market for good cigars is booming, and eccentric, commercially backward Cuba is having to respond. One problem is maintaining the quality of the precious raw material. In the Vuelta Abajo, the damp, verdant tobacco region near the city of Pinar del Rio in the north-west of the island, the tobacco research stations seem to be rising to this part of the challenge at least. Tractors may be decades old and held together by plastic wire, but the big test—finding new, ever more productive tobacco varieties—is being met. Two new, high-yielding strains, called Habana 1992 and Habana 2000, have been developed as replacements for the treasured but now old and disease-prone criollo and corojo plants. The new varieties are proving happily resistant to blue mould and black shine, plant diseases which can kill a tobacco plant within a day.

This research and farming would not be possible without Western finance. Habanos SA is the Cuban agency responsible for exporting cigars. Under a “crop-finance” arrangement, now five years old, Habanos's two main trading partners—Spain's Tabacalera SA and the French state tobacco monopoly, Seita, pay for half their coming year's purchases in cash six months before the tobacco crop is harvested.

This is but one example of an improvised world trade in Havanas that, complete with an American boycott, is unique, not to say opaque. Demand for Cuban cigars rests partly on mystique, and mystique is a fragile thing. It depends on unshaken confidence that Cuba has the finest leaf, the most artisanal cigar-making factories and the best craft tradition.

Cigar importers and smokers all terribly want to go on believing those things about their cherished Havanas. But their faith in the holiest of smokes is under test. There are horrid doubts: about consistency and about counterfeiting. French cigar traders draw a parallel with what happened to French wine making in the 1970s: despite scandals, defeats in tasting tests and competition from new wines on three continents, French growers complacently rested on their vines, convinced that they had the best soils, the best wine-making weather and the best grapes.

The biggest worry is about a drop in rolling standards. Many buyers think this is due to an increase in the number of cigar factories from 17 to 43—itself a consequence of hugely increased exports, from around 50m cigars in 1993 to a target of 300m in 2001. It takes nine months to train a new roller to make only a small cigar. Good colour sorters need to learn to tell three dozen leaf shades ranging from a deep brown to a rich green at a glance. Such standards are hard to keep, let alone spread. And boxes of Havanas are now packed off with a mixture of shades and containing sub-standard cigars. Many of the bigger sizes—pyramids, robustos and torpedos—are hard to obtain, even in Havana. Unless, of course, you buy counterfeit cigars. “Cuban cigars” are made in factories in Mexico, Jamaica and even Quebec. To confuse things, some poorly made counterfeits are made illegally in Cuba itself and sold to tourists (many of whom have their dud purchases taken away by customs police at the airport).

The people at Habanos are aware of the growing risk to the prestige of Cuban cigars. They asked Richard Geoffroy of Dom Pérignon, the world's most expensive champagne, to talk at their conference. He gave a fine speech about France's Appelation Contrôlée system, which sets rules wines must meet to deserve the label of a prized locality. But such a system, even if applicable to cigar making in Cuba, would not directly address the threat of deliberate counterfeits. One topic being talked about at the conference was simpler, surer ways to spot fakes. French wine making again provided a possible model. Christian Mouiex, who owns Château Pétrus in Bordeaux, developed a clever technique for foiling counterfeiters of the world's most expensive red wine: he had a label designed that shows its watermark under infra-red light. Could not something similar be done, at a realistic cost, for Havanas?

Cuban cigars are already expensive, and getting more so. They are no longer alone at the top of a demanding world market. Very good cigars are made nearby in Honduras, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Mystique by itself will not be enough. Somehow, the Cuban cigar industry has to find a modus vivendi between modern quality control and the craft of the hand roller.